RE: Visibility (was Re: Introducing the Service Oriented Architec tural style, and it's constraints and properties.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Baker [mailto:distobj@acm.org]
> Sent: Wednesday, February 26, 2003 11:01 AM
> To: Burdett, David
> Cc: 'www-ws-arch@w3.org '
> Subject: Re: Visibility (was Re: Introducing the Service Oriented
> Architec tural style, and it's constraints and properties.
> 
>
> So, a *rhetorical* question for those of you who don't believe that
> GET is at the same layer as getStockQuote; what would you call a
> protocol that does have a "getStockQuote" method?  Note; "application
> protocol" is already taken. 8-)
>

It's not an application protocol, it's an application *using* a bunch of
protocols possibly including SOAP, and/or HTTP, and/or pigeon transport, to
do its job.  What do you call a protocol that involves POSTing an HTML form
to a CGI script that looks up a stock quote?  I for one rebel at the idea
that every HTML FORM and CGI script is a "new protocol" in any useful sense
of the term, although it is probably as technically true as the assertion
that every WSDL file defines a new protocol.

Conventional "RPC" Web services don't do anything different than that HTML
form / CGI script at the protocol level, they simply ofer an additional set
of tools (or protocol, if SOAP is in fact a "protocol" in this example) to
allow stupid software rather than human programmers to generate those POST
bodies on one side and map them onto code invocations at the other.

Anyway, we're floundering around in the mud chasing the carp at the bottom
of the trout pond, IMHO :-)

Received on Wednesday, 26 February 2003 11:13:26 UTC